The sum is something deeply profound: about awkwardness, culture clash, failed connections, and – ultimately – the strength that comes from surviving a trial by fire.

Fiennes assumes the character and recites shocking revelations that Amirami’s obsessive research has disclosed. It sounds like a cheap trick, but the actor pulls it off flawlessly.

It’s tradition versus modernity, it’s defiance in the face of oppression, but more importantly, the film speaks to how Fiddler on the Roof resonates time and time again, across generations, to the human condition.

Anchored at the center is such a warm, tenderhearted personality and worldview that sends you out of the other side with a rejuvenated and healed spirit.

Campanella’s script (which is adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri) bogs down, however, when the focus of the story is on Benjamín, who is dogged by his memories and his inability to make a play for Irene.

Good Time demonstrates an admirable daring in its technique and willingness to go against the grain, but its payoff isn’t equal to its challenges.

Why wait for 2012? If you're hankering for a taste of the apocalypse, the opening sequence of this eye-opening, stomach-queasing doc has plenty to go on – witness menacing superimpositions on a bleak, blighted landscape – and the hits just keep on coming.

It recommends itself best to viewers who can appreciate its novelty and roll with the risks it takes.

Leisurely unfolding, much like a fat novel, this turn-of-the-century Swedish drama has a warm, enveloping feel. It's flawlessly steeped in early 20th century atmosphere, costumes, and culture, but a gripping page-turner this family saga is not.

Although not directed by Hiyao Miyazaki (though he executive-produced and co-wrote it), the film retains the look and feel of the "Spirited Away" master's best work, allowing for huge emotions amidst a world of Lilliputian scope.

The film becomes a kind of meditative act.

The story is much less about its resolution than the experience along the way. At its best, Central Station is a movie of small textures and fleeting moments, the intangibles that pass between people.

Household Saints restores one's faith in miracles while teaching us how to invent them ourselves. That, and also teaching us not to worry about getting stigmata on the carpet when Jesus comes to visit.

In Passages, Sachs’ enthralling eighth feature, he and his regular co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias return to the more experimental bent of Keep the Lights On, echoing that film’s elliptical nature and naturalistic presentation of sex, its dizzyingly destructive relationships and Euro-arthouse affect.

The Queen of Versailles encourages the very worst tendencies in the audience: to sneer at the Siegels, to marvel at their tackiness, to root for their fall from grace.

Sergio Leone and John Ford would likely both recognize Nowar’s film as an echo of their own Monument Valley adventures.

It would be difficult not to be swept away by the dramatic intensity of Incendies.

Well-considered, beautifully made, and often gripping in its narrative, the film epitomizes the best the documentary format can offer.

Less a film than a lyrical, naturalistic tone poem.

Trophy instead holds its subject right up to the light, like a diamond, so that all facets can be seen. It may not rouse the public to action, but it will give us something to ponder.

The action sequences are breathtaking, and the character-driven humor is, as per usual, top notch.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

Brutally frank, and with a biting sense of humor and an earnest love for her husband, Michel, at least for me, becomes the emotional center from which the film radiates.

The good news is Craig, who was riveting as a London pharmaceutical salesman in the recent Brit import "Layer Cake," is equally mesmerizing here.

Sunny, warm, and so full as to almost split its skin, that's Much Ado. The Bard himself said it, “Ripeness is all.” Here's a hey nonny nonny to that.

Big Night is, in a word, delicious.

A pure distillation of the great director's ongoing themes of the frailty of the human psyche and mankind's willful inability to accept the inevitable, whatever that may be.

Ad Astra lacks the quiet, understated contemplation of "First Man," or the heartfelt ruminations of Steven Soderbergh's unfairly overlooked version of "Solaris." Instead, it's got about as much to say about family, attachment, and belonging as a Fast and Furious flick.